8 Reasons You’re Losing Money On Your Blog

You spend hours and hours of time each week on your blog, but at the end of the month, there’s nothing to show for it in your bank account. In fact, after you add up all of the expenses associated with maintaining your blog, you’ve actually lost some money.

What’s the problem? Here are some possible culprits and what you can do to overcome them.

1. You Never Researched Your Niche

While you need to be interested in the blog niche you choose, personal affinities play a minor role in blog profitability. Ultimately, it’s the readers of your blog who determine whether or not you’re successful. If you never researched your niche prior to launching your blog, then it’s likely that your root problem is a lack of demand for the content you’re producing.

“If you’re committed to building a popular and profitable site, you’ll have to write, read, and talk about your topic almost every day for the next several years. You’ll invest thousands of hours, quite literally gambling with your time,” CopyBlogger.com notes.

“The question is, how will you approach it? Will you start writing and hope someone notices you? Or will you carefully research your niche, looking for the precise angle that will make your content irresistible?”

While CopyBlogger is obviously giving advice to bloggers who are just getting started, it’s never too late to consider the questions they ask “after the fact.” If you never researched your niche and are merely hoping someone notices you, then consider this your answer for why you’re losing money. You’ll either need to scrap your blog altogether and launch a new, better researched one in the future or find a way to overhaul your current blog.

2. Your Blog Isn’t a Priority

There are a lot of lazy bloggers out there. Nobody’s calling you lazy, but if you’re losing money on your blog, you may want to consider the possibility that you aren’t ambitiously chasing success.

We’ve all seen article headlines that read “Here’s How I Make $24,343 Per Month Blogging from Home” or “I Was Able to Quit My Job After Blogging for Two Weeks.” Unfortunately, these articles are highly misleading and designed to generate clicks, not impart actual wisdom. But the negative byproduct of these headlines is that people incorrectly assume that you can make money laying on your sofa and writing a couple of blog posts each week.

Successful bloggers work hard. In fact, they work really, really hard. They often put in more hours each week than traditional salaried employees at major corporations. So, if you’re only dedicating a few hours per week to blogging, you aren’t making it a priority in your life. Perhaps, that’s why you aren’t making money.

3. You Aren’t Willing to Invest Time and Money

When blogging isn’t an actual priority in your life, then you fail to commit the necessary resources to make it successful. The most obvious areas where this reality shines through are time and money. We already discussed the fact that blogging takes time in the last section, so let’s turn our attention towards money.

You have to think about your blog like an investment. As the saying goes, “It takes money to make money.” In other words, if you want to generate revenue, you’re going to have to put up some of your own money to get the engine lubricated. (There are obviously some exceptions to this, but for the most part, you’ll have to pony up some capital.)

The reason you haven’t put up money is because you aren’t totally confident in your blog. This goes back to pre-launch research. If you do your research and find a niche that you believe is capable of being tapped into, you’ll be more than willing to invest your time and money into it.

4. You Have a “Come and Find Me” Strategy

One of the more prevalent issues surrounding unprofitable blogs is what we’ll call the “Come and Get Me” strategy. In this strategy (or lack of strategy), bloggers simply publish content and then wait for visitors to stumble upon it. (Hint: This very rarely happens with blogs that aren’t already established.)

You need to replace this strategy with the “Go-Getter” strategy. Under this approach, you’ll proactively go out and draw people to your blog. In other words, you develop a strategic lead generation strategy that draws readers into your content. Thankfully there are plenty of ways to make this happen. Here are a few suggestions:

Use Google AdSense. “If you’ve got a blog, you can quickly and easily monetize it using Google AdSense,” Coupon Ninja points out. “It’s totally free to use, and with it, you can place small, mostly inconspicuous ads on your blog. When visitors click on an ad, you get a few cents; if your blog gets a lot of traffic, those clicks can add up quickly.”

Share on social media. Social media is great because it’s free. If you already have a significant following on platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, you can disseminate new posts and encourage people to click back to the articles. You can also use targeted hashtags to reach people who don’t already follow you.

Feature other bloggers. One interesting strategy is to mention other bloggers and blogs in your content. Most bloggers have Google Alerts set up for their names and will notice when you highlight them. As a result, they may share your post with their own networks (or reach out to you in the future).

5. You Don’t Have a Profit Funnel

If you want to profit from blogging, then you need a plan. Specifically, you need a profit funnel or sales funnel. This funnel provides a step-by-step plan for how you’ll move individuals from blog visitor to customer.

Every blog profit funnel is different, but you should follow the basic outline of the traditional sales funnel. At the top of the funnel is awareness. At this stage, people are just discovering who you are and what your blog offers. Next, there’s interest. At this point in the funnel, the individual not only knows about your blog but is interested in what you’re saying. Third, comes a decision. The individual makes the decision that they are going to purchase what you’re offering. And finally, there’s action. The visitor follows through and makes a purchase.

The goal of a profit funnel is to move your blog visitors from awareness to action. It’s not easy, but it’s necessary to spend some time developing a specific plan that resonates with your audience and customers.

“Networking with bloggers just like yourself is of the utmost importance. Why? Because it means that you will be able to further promote your website – and they, in return, can further promote theirs,” says one blogger. “Building connections and forming relationships is important when it comes to promoting yourself online, but you do have to make sure that you start off by giving them the right impression.”

The issue most bloggers have is that they confuse the idea of networking with harassment. Sending out generic spam emails to a bunch of bloggers isn’t networking, and tweeting at someone a dozen times in two hours isn’t networking.

In order to successfully network, you need to show the other party that you’re interested in who they are and what they do. You can do this by posting thoughtful comments on their posts, sharing their articles on your social media accounts, referencing their articles in your own posts, etc. Then, once you’ve established that you aren’t just a leech looking to take advantage of someone, you can reach out directly and try to spark a relationship.

7. Your Writing is Poor

If everything else seems to be fine, then you may have to turn your attention towards the quality of your writing. While it can be difficult to accept the fact that you aren’t the next Hemingway or Twain, the reality of the situation is that many bloggers simply can’t produce quality content. Hire a copywriter or send some of your work to a trusted individual and ask for an honest opinion.

If you aren’t a great writer, this doesn’t mean all hope is lost. Blogging is equal parts writing and marketing. It helps to be a good writer, but you can always focus your attention on the marketing portion while partnering with a writer.

8. You Fail to Apply Knowledge

The final reason you’re losing money on your blog is that you don’t take action. You’ll read an article like this that clearly exposes some of your flaws and you don’t feel strongly enough to apply what you’ve learned.

If this article teaches you anything, you need to be calculated and strategic in everything you do. Don’t merely consume content. Consume content, digest it, and then apply that energy towards actively improving your situation.

It’s Time to Reverse Your Approach to Blogging

Whether you’ve been blogging for six months or six years, you shouldn’t be losing money on your blog. If you are, then something is seriously wrong beneath the surface. Chances are, one of these eight culprits is to blame.

Reverse your approach to blogging and find out how you can start making money.

Larry Alton is an independent business consultant specializing in social media trends, business, and entrepreneurship. Follow him on Twitter and LinkedIn.

About Guest Blogger

This post was written by a guest contributor. Please see their details in the post above.

When I started our company blog in the summer of 2014, I put an emphasis and premium on networking and the payoff was HUGE!

I also realize that if you don’t know “what business you are “really” in” from the audiences point of view, you will struggle with this.

All of us have two audiences at any one time…

1. Those who are our prospects and customers.
2. Those who serve the same audience we do but in a different way (Networking).

Here is the challenge… because we don’t have a relevant and clear message and most content is way too broad in topic and substance, we miss both of them entirely.

And, if we do get lucky and hit one of them here or there the audience doesn’t do anything because they didn’t have that “OMG, how did you know…? moment where they felt the writer solved their one problem, met their one need, or fulfilled their one desire.

When you don’t have a relevant message and not specific, the call-to-action falls flat or you’re left with “Join my Newlsetter”, and we know how that works out.

When we have clarity, then we can focus on the strategies and networking becomes powerful because it’s purposeful and mutually beneficial.

I agree with you so much… it’s a lot of work and it shouldn’t be taken lightly. If done well, the rewards are huge. I’ve become a proponent of creating less content per month on our blog but going much more deeper and relevant. It takes a lot of time and research to develop that kind of content, and we are focusing more on bringing extreme value to audience #2 because they have access to audience #1 and more apt to share, comment and link back to our content.

Thus, driving more of audience #1 to us. Instead of using the blog for regular weekly content we are using email and it’s working phenomenally. Those who want it are getting the content and converting.

Hello sir, I have a question.
I am an active blogger with my sites. One of my sites has reached 1000 visitors on a daily basis but the problem is, that was 6 months ago. Since then it hasn’t increased at all, even with social or any other process (how can Adsense help me get visitor is another question :/ ) I have tried all unpaid sources(I don’t want to invest on nay paid sources now), so how can I increase it, as it is turning to a headache now.
Please help.

I recently researched the income of over 100 sites and the difference in monetization methods was huge. Adsense Forget it! The average RPM was $9.97 Yep $9.97 for every 1000 people that visit your blog.

People with amazon affiliate links were averaging over 10X this and sites with affiliate links 15X

I hate to spam links on other people’s blogs, but If anyone wants the details get in contact.

Solid post Larry! I totally agree and something that relates to your #6 (You Don’t Actively Network) is the “publish and pray” mentality. That when bloggers hit publish they think their work is done, that they forget/ignore to promote their content. Thanks.

Thanks for the info Larry. If there’s one thing I can take away, it’s that your blog will never just explode one day with traffic and users. You need to put in the work and effort to make those things happen.

I appreciate your sharing on this article, especially point 1 and point 2 are totally great. However, there are missing a lot of small important steps in other points.

I remember Grant Cardone mentioned, “take money to make money is complete garbage but all about encouragement”. For beginner bloggers, they might not have money to invest that is why they blog to drive free traffic. But if they have money, they don’t have to blog and just build a sale funnel and run advertising on it to get traffic.

Google Adsense doesn’t help generate traffic, but a new blog has to be at least 6 months old, in order to sign-up Google Adsense.

Sharing on social media, if a new social profile has 0 following, then sharing content on social media is another job for beginner bloggers to promote to get a following, then receive traffic to their blog.

Point 4, dot point 3 is working in building a relationship with other bloggers.

When you mentioned, ” Your writing is poor?”, quite broad. It might scare beginner bloggers… in fact, they need a clear strategic or valuable tips to share on an article with a tool called Grammarly will help improve their writing. And people do not like to read a blog with the use of highly educated vocabulary.

Finally, take action is definitely great! instead of thinking… take action now to make more mistakes and learn from it.

Trump’s friend mentioned, “the more action I take, the luckier I get”.

You got that right.
If one is serious at quitting their job and depending on blogging to foot all their bills then laziness,lack of creativity and time management are some of critical aspects to look into and improve if one is to make any formidable progress.

If you are employed and currently have the idea of quitting to replicate the success that some of your friends have achieved through online businesses,first stop and try to learn how they began and the grinding process involved before shooting to huge profit realm.

Also try and find out how your employer started.Lots of work is involved before and after success.

Our primary and ongoing goal should be to continuously develop innovative content and put a truly unique spin on whatever topic we’re blogging about. For a blog to be successful, we must stay on topic and cater to the wants, needs and expectations of our target audience.

Blogs are about content. Even if you love something, if you can’t write about it day after day, your blog isn’t going to go anywhere. Choosing a topic that you have lots of ideas for or can write about again and again and again without getting bored.

When we envision the possible niches for our blog over time, we will keep going back to one again and again. We might think about other niches and envision the possibilities for those, only to find our mind drifting back to the one topic.If it’s a niche that you truly enjoy, you will find it easy to write posts about things related to our niche. Eventually, thanks for sharing your valuable information regarding this topic.

Thanks for writing such a beautiful and informative article. Many bloggers fails due to choosing the wrong niche. I believe so. Choosing a right niche is very first step to get started with blogging. However I believe Affiliate marketing works great than Google AdSense.

I think the most relevant tip you wrote was, “Successful bloggers work hard. In fact, they work really, really hard.” Forget all the, niches, strategies, or even money. Exactly, most people are not treating it seriously, and have other agendas but If you are willing to put the time in and work for free to start, that’s 90% of the battle =).

I fully agree with Kaylee. Whether it’s blogging or any other business I have found that most individuals are not willing to put in the effort needed to become a success. Some try but then stop just short of reaching their full business potential. So sad.

When the visitor visits your site, a lot of choices will distract the visitor. With the ads matches what people are reading, then there is a great chance of conversion. Apart from the contextual advertisement, delivering the right kind of advertisement requires solid monetization plans to be successful. A blog full of ads definitely will follow the reader off from your content. Unfortunately, I see a lot of blogs that don’t choose the right ads. Ad-Planning is crucial for everything that you do with your blog.

On the other hand, people often expect too much too early. I see people starting sites all the time, and wanting to quit within a few weeks because they aren’t making tons of money yet. Bloggers might be building high traffic blogs, but it takes the experience actually to get the income. Moreover, most people tell you when they are trying to sell a blogging guide or course, it takes a lot of work and time to make a blog into a full-time income really, but with persistence, you can do it.

One thing that I learned early on is that you have to build your own brand and reputation first through loads of content. This will build trust with people, and get yourself known within the niche.

You really need to get that right before you can expect your site to start seeing consistent sales. But, once you get there, it tends to start growing itself.